This invention relates to electrophoresis systems and methods for the separation of complex mixtures of charged molecules, particularly complex biological mixtures, with higher resolution and higher throughput.
Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis is the method of choice for analysis of complex protein mixtures, but its level of resolution is not yet adequate to detect many of the protein components from cells or tissues. There remains a need to detect more of the protein components of cells, tissues, and other complex biological mixtures. Electrophoretic separation on large format gels, e.g., greater than about 20 cm by 20 cm, can greatly improve resolution. However, the advantages of increased resolution resulting from large format gels is typically offset by the difficulties encountered in handling such large gels in conventional systems. Furthermore, known methods of electrophoresis are often limited by convenience so that routine analysis of large numbers of samples is not practical.
Accordingly, electrophoresis systems that will enable casting large format gels of controlled thickness, electrophoresis of multiple large format gels within a reasonable time without excess heat generation, and convenient manipulation of the gels through all steps of the electrophoresis process thereby providing greater resolution and higher consistency of results are being sought.